I have to admit that I am confused. The US wants to pump a bunch of money into the economy in order to get consumers borrowing again – why? I thought that one of the primary issues was that the US consumer has borrowed too much in the past, supposedly to make up for a […]
So the British are increasing the international departure tax, and stating that it is an “externality tax”. What spectacularly wrong-headed logic. The externality they are talking about is “carbon emissions” – now as long as they tax the fuel that airlines use the externality is accounted for, as the carbon emissions stem from fuel use. […]
So the survey of inflation expectations are out and … median two-year ahead inflation expectations have surrendered 0.3 percentage points to lie at 2.7%. This takes this measure back to its March 2008 level. This is ok, however the big kicker for me is the average hourly earnings outlook, with expectations of hourly wage growth […]
This is an important question, given that we are in a situation where governments around the world are looking to loosen fiscal policy. Tyler Cowen succinctly lists the four (five) ways that fiscal policy influences the economic situation – note that this ignores issues of the quality or distribution of spending. These are: Generate some […]
Labour did some things that very much improved the accessibility of information about the New Zealand economy – namely make information from Statistics New Zealand free at Infoshare! However, the removal of health sector productivity statistics was a concern. This concern appeared again in the back of my head when hearing about National’s plans for […]
Excellent article by Tyler Cowen in the New York Times. (ht Economists View, Marginal Revolution). Paul Walker at Anti-Dismal has also covered this issue heavily (here, here, here, here, here, and here). Fundamentally, for New Zealand, there appears to be no reason for any change to fiscal policy to help deal with the slowdown – […]